Who is Kamui Kobayashi?

The Formula 1 years

Kobayashi was born in Amagasaki, Japan in 1986. His career ran through Italian and European single-seater championships before he reached Formula 1 in 2009 with Toyota's works programme as a test driver. He made his race debut at the 2009 Brazilian Grand Prix and held a full-time seat with BMW Sauber in 2010 and 2011, scoring 35 championship points across the two seasons.

Kobayashi's most-remembered F1 result came at the 2012 Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, where he finished third for Sauber in front of a home crowd. The third-place podium was Japan's first home-soil F1 podium in 22 years. Sauber dropped him at the end of 2012 and a planned 2013 seat with Caterham was financially unviable. He returned to F1 in 2014 with Caterham but the team collapsed mid-season.

The Toyota WEC transition

Kobayashi joined Toyota's WEC programme for 2016 with the TS050 Hybrid. The first season was a difficult one: the No. 5 car he shared with Stephane Sarrazin and Anthony Davidson led the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans with three minutes to run before retiring on the penultimate lap with a power-system failure, one of motorsport's most-replayed late-race losses.

The 2017 season formed the No. 7 crew that has driven the car ever since: Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez. The trio raced together through the LMP1-Hybrid years (2017-2020) and the Hypercar transition (2021-2022), making the No. 7 the longest-running fixed crew in WEC history at that point.

The 2021 Le Mans win

Kobayashi's 2021 Le Mans victory was the culmination of five years of near-misses with Toyota. The No. 7 had finished second to its own sister No. 8 in 2018, 2019 and 2020. The 2021 race was the first running of the Hypercar class, and the No. 7 led for most of the race with no significant errors, taking the chequered flag 12 laps ahead of the second-placed sister Toyota. The win was Kobayashi's first overall Le Mans victory in his sixth attempt with the manufacturer.

The pole and fastest-lap records

Kobayashi's 17 poles tie him with Conway at the top of the all-time list. His most famous qualifying lap is the 2022 Hyperpole at La Sarthe, a 3:24.408 in the GR010 Hybrid that still stands as the all-time Le Mans qualifying record.

His 23 race fastest laps are an outright record, three ahead of Conway and four ahead of Lopez. The lap-time database shows Kobayashi has set the fastest lap in roughly one in five WEC races he has started since 2017, an unusually high conversion rate for a sport where race fastest laps are typically distributed across the front-running cars.

The team principal role

Kobayashi was appointed team principal of Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe in 2022, taking over the WEC and Le Mans operational responsibility from his predecessor while continuing to race the No. 7. The dual driver-and-team-boss role is rare at the top level of endurance racing and unique among current Hypercar manufacturers.

The arrangement reflects Toyota's confidence in his judgment as a racing engineer as well as a driver. His race-day decisions are made from inside the cockpit; his strategic decisions for the team are made from a desk between events. The team-principal hat has not slowed his driving record, although it has constrained his test-day participation in 2024 and 2025.

Records and milestones

Kobayashi's WEC records as of the end of the 2025 season:

- 23 race fastest laps (all-time leader) - 17 race poles (joint all-time leader with Mike Conway) - 18 overall WEC race wins (fourth on the all-time list behind Buemi, Hartley and Conway) - 1 24 Hours of Le Mans overall win (2021) - Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe team principal since 2022

What is next

Kobayashi continues with Toyota in 2026 in his usual role as the No. 7's primary qualifier and team principal. With Ferrari now in a multi-year run of Hypercar dominance, his win record is unlikely to grow quickly, but his pole and fastest-lap records are extending in most rounds. The Conway-Kobayashi joint pole record at 17 is now Kobayashi-only territory in practice: Conway is retired from full-season Hypercar, and Kobayashi is the only one of the pair still adding to the record.